The present invention relates to a facsimile machine capable of accessing a mail server and displaying a home page.
In a conventional facsimile machine capable of displaying a home page, the following operations are carried out for obtaining a URL address and accessing a server: (1) having a menu displayed by using browser software; (2) thereby obtaining the URL address registered in a bookmark or the like; and (3) then accessing the server based on the obtained URL address.
In such a conventional facsimile machine, however, the operation to display a home page was performed by starting the browser and it required a number of steps to follow. Thus, there has been a problem with the prior art in that it requires complicated operations to be performed.
An invention having an electronic mail address registered at a one-touch dial key to thereby simplify transmission of an electronic mail is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H11-215338. Another invention related to the above, which had not been laid open when the present invention was applied for a patent in Japan, is disclosed in Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-125088.
In view of the above mentioned problem with the conventional art, it is an object of the present invention to provide a facsimile machine capable of displaying a desired home page by one-touch operation.
The facsimile machine of the present invention, while being in its standby state, obtains button specifying information, retrieves from memory means an address corresponding to the button specifying information, generates a protocol based on the address, and sends the generated protocol to a server. Upon receipt of data in HTML format from the server, it displays the obtained data by the browser. Thus, the facsimile machine can display a desired home page by one-touch operation.
Further, when the obtained button specifying information is a mail address or a telephone directory, the facsimile machine of the present invention generates a protocol or a phone number based on the obtained mail address or telephone directory and sends the generated protocol or phone number to the mail server or the telephone, and thereby, by only pressing a button while the facsimile machine is in its standby state, the facsimile machine can obtain a desired mail address or phone number in an automatic manner and create a display on the basis of the mail address or phone number. Thus, a desired display instruction can be made by one-touch operation.